Steam has just released its hardware survey for March 2020, and it paints an interesting picture on the overall Steam user market. First of all, a disclaimer: Steam's survey's don't refer to the entirety of the systems that are running its digital distribution platform; it hails from only a part of the connected machines which are randomly selected - ideally, in such as way so as for its hardware data to be representative of the overall Steam ecosystem.

The March 2020 hardware survey shows Intel CPUs gaining traction over AMD's, albeit in a very limited fashion (a 0.24% increase in total number of machines running with GenuineIntel CPUs). Cross referencing this increase with the average clockspeeds of Intel CPUs, though, paints an interesting picture: the higher clockspeeds in the 3.3 to 3.8 GHz range (which can relatively cleanly be associated with the company's higher-performance products), saw a decline in usage (contrary to AMD, which saw the reverse happening).

Steam, an online platform for gaming, has seen some incredible numbers in terms of usage last night. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that many people are in quarantine/self-isolation mode, the number of concurrent users of the platform has skyrocketed. Beating all the previous records of 18 million and 20 million concurrent users, Steam saw as much as 23 million concurrent users last night. Precisely 23,572,311 of users online, setting a new record-high number. The most played games were Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. For more statistics, please see here.

Valve's Half Life: Alyx has been finally released, after the company first teased, and then unwrapped the game back in November 2019. Half Life: Alyx has been completely developed for the VR gaming crown, with a focus on execution that meant for it to finally be VR's killer app - much like Halo was for the original Xbox. Valve describes the game as a full-length release in the Half Life universe, slotting in the 20-year time gap between the events of the original Half Life and Half Life 2.

Of course, to play this game, you need a PC-based VR headset to play the game through Steam. The game has received rave reviews already, featuring a 93 Metacritic score based on 24 critic reviews, and an 8.2 user score. Give it some time before actually looking for guidance in that user review score, though. Valve founder Gabe Newell had this to say: "Half-Life: Alyx represents the culmination of Valve's technological advancement over the past few years. We have built SteamVR, our game engine, our tools, and VR hardware specifically to enable us to ship the best content we know how to create. Today, as we ship Alyx remotely from our homes, we are hoping that everyone stays safe and has a great time playing the game. Please let us know what you think."

Steam experienced its highest ever service load over the weekend, with over 20.3 million users concurrently logged in. Of these over 6.4 million were actively playing a game. Its previous service load record was a little over 19 million users, hit just last month (February 2020). This is particularly interesting because the week of 9th March didn't particularly have any big game releases, and according a report by The Verge, most of the 6.4 million gaming were hooked to old favorites, such as CS:GO (>1.02 million), PUBG (>700k), and Dota 2 (>500k).

This record could be just as temporary, with big releases such as "Doom Eternal" lined up for the upcoming weekend. A spike in online gaming and other forms of on-demand entertainment shouldn't surprise anyone in the middle of a global pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak has forced most governments quarantine large populations, forcing businesses to have their employees work from home. Steam remains the leading game digital distribution and DRM platform.

CD Projekt Red has to be the most renowned games developer in the world, due to its consumer-friendly policies and overall posture when it comes to creating and maintaining their game worlds. The company has always given gamers more than the average company, with free DLCs being delivered throughout the first year of support for a given title (looking at you, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt), and added goodies to packages that from most other companies usually only feature the plastic packaging around the game disk. Their GOG games platform is also one of the most well-established out there, and has helped build the company's image due to its DRM-free approach.

All of this, alongside the fact that The Witcher series has seen a resurgence with the release of the Netflix series, and expectations on their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 title, have led the company towards tremendous growth, with it now ranking as second largest European gaming company, second only to Ubisoft - and the difference is still tremendous. Ubisoft has around 16,000 employees (as of 2019), and is home to some of the world's most historic franchises, while CD Projekt Red counts more than 900 employees (as of 2018), with that number having certainly increasing in size in preparation for, and in continued development, of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game streaming service has recently suffered a big blow coming from Activision Blizzard, as the company has pulled its entire game library from the GeForce NOW platform. However, there is some good news for GeForce NOW coming. In its announcement blog, NVIDIA shared that upcoming game that is perhaps the most anticipated release of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, will be available on its game streaming service. One of the NVIDIA staff shared that "GeForce NOW members will be able to grab their copy on Steam and play the game the moment it's available. GeForce NOW Founders members can explore the streets of Night City with RTX ON, fully optimized and instantly available, even on your Mac laptop."

A tiny 21-megabyte patch of "Devil May Cry 5," pushed through Steam, allegedly removed the game's Denuvo DRM component. There's no record of the patch in the list of updates for the game, although some Redditors comment that removal of the DRM has improved their game load times. Denuvo is a sophisticated DRM solution that can be implemented in a number of ways by game developers. A best-case implementation has negligible performance impact, but if done poorly, Denuvo could have a noticeable performance impact. Our comprehensive article on Denuvo dives deeper into the tech. Game publishers prefer implementing a DRM solution to not, despite the fact that pirates are able to crack it weeks or months following the release. They are content with making most of their revenues through pre-orders or purchases made while the game isn't cracked. Game publishers eventually voluntarily remove DRM solutions to improve game performance. DMC5's DRM removal comes about 11 months into its release.

NVIDIA today has finally launched its GeForce Now streaming gaming service, and users can enjoy partial amounts of free gaming under the business model. There are two tiers of users on offer: Free, and Founders. The free tier, which you may give a go to check the streaming infrastructure and if it's something you would enjoy paying for, is limited to 60-minute play sessions. This means that after the clock has stopped ticking (with potentially intrusive pop-up notifications reminding you of how much time you have left every 10 minutes), you'll be forced to quit the game, and submit yourself to a playing queue until your next 60-minute window is up. RTX isn't available in this tier, though - so if you also wanted to see for yourself what the raytracing talk is all about, you'll have to pay $5 (monthly subscription) to cross that particular river.

Founder-tier members, however, will be able to enjoy the latest RTX-enabled games. The only ones listed on the service, for now, are Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Call of Duty: modern Warfare, Metro Exodus, and Deliver Us the Moon, which NVIDIA has recently started bundling with select RTX graphics cards). There is still a catch though: play sessions will be limited to 6 hours, after which time you'll be brought back to a gaming queue (though you'll have precedence over Free tier accounts, should there be many Founders-tier players in the queue, you might have to wait a while). There's a limited-time 90-day introductory period of which you can take advantage while subscribing for the Founders tier right now, which means you will only be billed after that 90-day grace period is over. Remember - you have to own a digital copy of the game you want to play in any of the more popular storefronts, such as EPIC and Steam, before you can game - but it's still a nice way to experience RTX should you currently own a non-RTX-enabled graphics card.

Steam today stated another round of sales on their digital storefront. Dubbed the "Lunar New Year" sale, it is being held in celebration of the Chinese new year, with hundreds of games with discounts that can go anywhere from 10% up to 90% off. You can grab TPU's game of the year, Red Dead Redemption 2, with 20% off. Another (this time, personal) suggestion is to try out Disco Elysium. If you like isometric RPGs, this one, for me, takes the gameof the year for 2020 award, with truly incredible writing, and a true RPG experience that isn't bogged down by the need to include a combat system (and its connected writing requirements and such).

Other offerings are Gears V, available 50% off, Frostpunk (60% off), The Witcher III (if you don't already own it, of course, it's 70% off), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (-35%), and various others - likely more than you have money to purchase even at their discounted rates.

Cut from the digital storefront cloth as you will, the EPIC Games Store has come to stay. EPIC has just announce that its digital distribution platform has achieved over 100 M subscribed users (which is different from active users, so mind the gap). That is still a success by any metric, since the digital games storefront was such a one-sided market before EPIC entered the fray - you'd be forgiven for describing the PC games distribution platform network as being composed of "Steam and the others".

Through platform exclusivity deals for new PC launches, a more enticing profit split between developers and games that are available through its store (with its headline and exclusive-grabbing 88-12 percent revenue split), monthly game giveaways and the power of Fortnite, EPIC has said that the EPIC Games Store alone generated $680 million in revenue thus far. Of that amount, Epic says $251 million represents sales of third-party games. part of that revenue has been channeled back at gamers - $23 million has been distributed in coupons and discounts toward game sales. According to EPIC, the nine most successful games in its platform are World War Z, Borderlands 3, Untitled Goose Game, Metro Exodus, Control, The Outer Worlds, The Division 2, Dauntless, and Satisfactory.

Steam has revealed the games that sold the most on the platform for this year of 2019. While Steam's own numbers don't represent the entirety of the PC market - considering other digital storefronts such as GOG, EPIC Games Store and publisher-exclusive stores like Origin also have a relevant market share - this does let us take a considered peek at the PC gaming landscape. Steam's top sellers also includes top grossing, where games that have store-bound skins or extras are also taken into account).

Steam's Platinum lineup includes all the hallmarks of PC gaming: online experiences such as Warframe, DOTA 2, PUBG, and the Elder Scrolls Online, through strategy experiences such as Civilization VI and Total War: Three Kingdoms. Considering that Destiny 2 also made it in the platform, many gamers actually enjoy that experience - it is unclear if Steam considers every redeem from the Blizzard store into the Steam Store a sale, but if not, it's mighty impressive that a game that released on October 1st.

The Annual Steam Winter Sale is on now thru January 2, 2020 at 10 am Pacific. In addition to finding massive savings on thousands of titles, gamers may earn Festivity Tokens when they shop on Steam and/or when they complete Holiday Quests. Earned Festivity Tokens may be spent in the Holiday Market, where players will find The Steam Winter Sale Coupon, new Chat Stickers, new Chat Room Effects, and more. The initial Holiday Quests are on now, with new Quests being added throughout the sale.

Halo: Reach for PC is going live today, as per confirmations from game developer 343 Industries. The game is supposed to go live tonight at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST when it will be released on PC and Xbox One. The PC port is going to be available for purchase on three platforms: Game Pass, Steam, and the Windows Store. The PC port currently contains some bugs, however, 343 Industries is working to iron them out before the game launches. Features like uncapped FPS will be mostly unstable during the launch period and might cause the game to crash, so it's better to turn it off for now. Latency issues could also be present in the beginning but 343i is working hard to remove it before the game drops tonight. For all Steam users, you can pre-purchase the game here.

Steam may be losing some luster in the digital game distribution arena with the quantity and quality of heavy players that have appeared since its inception - I'm looking at GOG and the EPIC Games Store especially. However, Steam continues to be the service that offers the largest library of purchasable titles. As such, if you don't have a backlog of games to play already (don't lie, you do have them, but we won't judge if you buy some more), now is the time to make the jump.

The biggest discount percentage I've seen, so far, is that for Rise of the Tomb Raider, which cuts a total of 85% from its listing price. Discounts range from 20% through to that (apparent) ceiling, with franchises such as the Dark Souls Series (Dark Souls 3 for $15 (75% off), Dark Souls 2 for $9.99 (75% off), and Dark Souls Remastered going for $23.99 (40% off). The Dishonored franchise also sees massive cuts from their list prices, at 70% for the original and 75% for Dishonored 2 and its Death of the Outsider expansion (how I love these games). The Master Chief Collection, however, isn't on sale - it's still in pre order, you know how it is. But maybe one of these days you'll get that one (though it already is a steal at its launch price for the quality of games you're getting). Go on, feast your eyes and murder your wallet. We're cheering for you.

Well, that headline must've been met with both a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia, and a sudden, stab-like wound on the back of many readers. The usage of Valve and Half-Life together in the same sentence has been the victim of multiple memes and disappointments over the years, with the studio being seemingly unable to keep up with the mantle of great games it has released before in the Half-Life universe. Half-Life 3 is already so much of a failed expectation that the game could (likely) never live up to the expectations set on it at this point in time. It seems valve is shrugging the game away with a Half-Life set VR game, though, in the form of Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve itself have posted a teaser image on Twitter, announcing it as a flagship VR game available for SteamVR. To be unveiled on November 21st, nothing much is known about the game by now; but it's expected it will be a VR-exclusive experience. The game started out as a single-player exploration experience for VR, and it seems to have found its way developed into a full-fledged game. Apparently, this Half-Life: Alyx game is the first in Valve's plans of releasing more VR games in the future, which may or may not be set in the Half-Life universe. This could actually be an interesting experience for VR, if you can get beyond the usual betrayal of not seeing an announcement for Half-Life 3. Who knows - this could even be the killer app for VR, or an Half-Life renaissance in the minds of gamers and Valve themselves. At the very least, we know it will induce nostalgia.

Flight School Studio have released today their unique pinball hack and slash Creature in the Well on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Steam for $14.99 USD. The title is also available for free to Xbox Game Pass subscribers on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One.

As the last remaining BOT-C unit, venture deep into a desert mountain to restore power to an ancient facility, haunted by a desperate Creature. Uncover and upgrade powerful gear in order to free the city of Mirage from a deadly sandstorm.

Valve announced that Steam will finally enter the Chinese market. The Chinese version of Steam will be entirely different from the International version of Steam (available in markets such as Taiwan, India, and Australia). Valve's Chinese partner, Perfect World Entertainment, which already operates a Steam-like DRM platform called Arc, will also operate Steam China, which will go under the brand name "Zhengqi Pingtai" (Steam Platform).

The need for a China-specific version of Steam arises from stringent regulations by China on not just game content, but also data-localization. This partitioning of the userbase cuts both ways, as it keeps data of non-Chinese Steam users from being localized in China. Perfect World will also handle the individual screening and publication of Steam titles to not break any Chinese laws. The platform will initially have 40 titles, including Valve's homebrew "Dota2" and "Dota Underlords." Perfect World CEO Xiao Hong assured gamers that they will benefit from high-bandwidth and low-latency servers spread across China.

Assetto Corsa Competizione, the big AAA race simulator slated for a September release, will lack support for NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing technology, not just at launch, but even the foreseeable future. The Italian game studio Kunos Simulazioni in response to a specific question on the Steam Community forums confirmed that the game will not receive NVIDIA RTX support.

"Our priority is to improve, optimize, and evolve all aspects of ACC. If after our long list of priorities the level of optimization of the title, and the maturity of the technology, permits a full blown implementation of RTX, we will gladly explore the possibility, but as of now there is no reason to steal development resources and time for a very low frame rate implementation," said the developer, in response to a question about NVIDIA RTX support at launch. This is significant, as Assetto Corsa Competizione was one of the posterboys of RTX, and featured in the very first list by NVIDIA, of RTX-ready games under development.

Blazing Bit Games is proud to release today Episode One of Nightmare Reaper, their new retro first person shooter game, launching in Steam Early Access for Windows. Explore the cursed depths of a nightmare while finding powerful weapons and improving your abilities in this new indie game that breaches the wall between the classics and modern sensibilities.

"We're really proud of how much content and polish we managed to cram into this initial Early Access build of the game. We can't wait to open a dialogue with players and make Episodes 2 and 3 even better." - said Bruno Beaudoin, Founder.

Valve is busy as ever in its quest to bring better experiences to gamers all over the world. However, we as gamers can't see what are they working on until it is released. But that is about to change. Valve is today introducing Steam Labs, a community hub for all the experimental features that are being worked on behind the scenes. Valve says that the reason for creating this is that "...we create many experimental features with codenames like The Peabody Recommender and Organize Your Steam Library Using Morse Code. For the first time, we're giving these works-in-progress a home called Steam Labs, where you can interact with them, tell us whether you think they're worth pursuing further, and if so, share your thoughts on how they should evolve."

For now they are releasing three experiments to showcase the purpose of Labs, called Micro Trailers, The Interactive Recommender and The Automated Show. All of these experiments are designed to help users find a game they love. The experiments can be tried out on the Labs website, and after using them you can share your opinions on the Steam Labs cumunity hub. To follow future news and announcements from Steam Labs, you can join the Steam Labs community group.

EPIC CEO Tim Sweeney in a veritable Tweetstorm detailed EPIC's strategy on gaming exclusivity a bit more - and to listen to the CEO, EPIC is doing this as a way to break Steam's grasp on the PC games distribution market and their 30/70 distributor's cut. Asked on games exclusivity and their usage as a digital storefront strategy, Sweeney said that EPIC "believes exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry." He also says that this split is a "disastrous situation for developers and publishers alike."

Sweeney says that other independent storefronts that have been launched over the years (we imagine he's speaking of GOG and Humble Bundle, just to name a few), "none seem to have reached 5% of Steam's scale." He goes on to say that "this leads to the strategy of exclusives which, though unpopular with dedicated Steam gamers, do work, as established by the major publisher storefronts and by the key Epic Games store releases compared to their former Steam revenue projections and their actual console sales." His stance is that EPIC's 12/88 split is fairer for developers (stating that a 30% cut would almost totally cut into their profits), and that this additional money that enters studios' pockets will necessarily be split among "(1) reinvestment, (2) profit, and (3) price reduction", and that in this way, EPIC's solution is both proportionate to the problem, and a move that will benefit gamers in the long run.

Aurora Studio is thrilled to announce that battle royale shooter, Ring of Elysium has left Early Access and is now a full release on Steam. The well-received title recently released it's latest game mode Ashen Eye which features no zone shrinking and pits players against one another in all-new gameplay. To celebrate the game's official release Aurora Studio will also be rewarding players with a new weapon skin as well as equipment appearances.

Having launched on Steam Early Access on September 19, 2018 Ring of Elysium introduced players to a dynamic weather system in which they battled it out against freezing temperatures and oncoming avalanches while taking out enemy players. The game has since evolved into a fan favorite sparking cosplays as well as an active esports community.

The annual Steam game sale celebration is here, in the form of the Summer Sale. The now legendary platform for games consumption on the PC ecosystem has announced that from today through July 9th, thousands of games are experiencing price cuts that can go up to 90%. If you're planning to get your game fix, and it isn't an EPIC Games Store Exclusive, you can try and pick it up here at a discounted price - provided you can actually reach the site. Storefront price cuts are Devil May Cry 5 (-34%) and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (-50%) but you can also grab Ni-oh, for example, at a 60% discount. The new Summer Sale now features a Steam Summer Grand Prix mode, where users can band together in groups to complete milestones (including unlocking quests and achievements) that will grant users games from their wishlist as they achieve "Pit Stops".

As it stands, it seems there have been some connection issue,s with users reporting "502 - Bad gateway" errors. For me, the page simply appears blank, with not even a single error report shown (after I finished writing this piece, I tried the steam store page again, and it seems to be working - at least for now.

After almost 1 year of Early Access and 7 years of development, Seeds of Resilience is out now. It's a 2D turn-based survival management game where you have to make a new village from scratch. The game has a special story, it was born in a time where the environment was still a forgotten issue, 6 years ago. It was the kind of time where growth was the only thing people were interested in.

The next chapter in the smash-hit reboot of the genre-defining FPS, "DOOM Eternal," is releasing on November 22nd, 2019. Everybody's favorite run-and-gun monster-slaughter simulator will be released on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. It will also come to Google Stadia as a streamed game, just a week following the platform's launch. The premise of this game is simple, Hell has come to the Earth, and brought the Doom Slayer with it. "Eternal" also includes new multiplayer game modes, including "battlemode," where two player-controlled demons face a fully-loaded Doom Slayer. The game is up for pre-order on Steam, if you're already sold on the game by watching its E3 2019 trailer."DOOM Eternal" story trailer follows.